Fort Worth weekly gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1887-11-25
LOOK TO YOUR LIVER.
There Can Be No Perfectly Sound and
Healthy Moral Life Without a
Perfectly Healthy Body.
When We Think God FroWns on Us 1t is
Often the Case th8t Our Physical
Organism is at Fsult.
Tho Drunkards' Liver, the IdIers' Liver, the
Libsrtines' Liver, the Gamblers L.vor
Held up to View.
Special to the Gazette.


7. De Witt Talmsge, d. D., opened the
services at the Tabernacle this morning by
giving out the hymn beginning:
Should coming days be cold and dark,
We need not cease our singing;
That perfect rest naught can Wolest,
Where golden harps are ringing.
He then explained passage in the
Gospel of st. Matthew concerning the in
ferior kind of salt that was cast out to
make walks of, to be trodden under foot
of men. The subject of DR.. Talmage's
discourse was "The Gospel of Health"
and his text from Proverbs vii, %:
"Till dart strike through his liver" He
said:
There is a
FASHION IN SERMONICs.
A comparatively small part of the Bible is
called on for texts. Most of the passages
of scripture when announced at the open
ing of sermons Immediately divide them
selves into the old discussions that we
have heard from boyhood, and the effect
on US IS soporific. The auditor guesses
at the start just what the preacher will
say. There are important chapters
and verses that have never been
preached from. Much of my lifetime I
am devoting to unlocking these gold
chests and blasting open these Guarries.
We talk about the heart, and preach
about the heart, and sing about the heart,
but If you refer to the physical organ
that we call the heart, it has not half so
much to do with spiritual health or dis
ease, morsl exaltation or spiritual de-
bo 70 hn cI1
ton of which Solomon calls as in the
text, when he describes sin progressing
"tilI dart strike
THROUGH HIS LIVER"
Solomon's anatomical and physiologi-
cal discoveries were so very great that he
was nearly 5000 years ahead Of the sci
entists of his day. He, more than 1000
years before Christ, seemed to know
about the circulation of the blood, which
Harvey discovered 1919 years after
Christ, for when Solomon in Ecclesiastes,
describing the human body, speaks of
the pitcher at the fountain, he evidently
means the three canals leading from the
heart that receive the blood like pitch
ers. When he speaks in Ecclesisstes of
the silver cord of life, he evidently means
the spinal marrow, about which in our
day Doctors Meyo, and Carpenter, and
Delton, and Flint, and BroWn-SeQuard
nave experimental. And Solomon re-
corded in the Bible thousands of years
before scientists discovered it, that in
his time the spinal cord relaxed in old
age, producing the tremors of hand and
head: "Or the silver cord be loosed."
In the text he reveals the fact that he
hud CTR haf cy1a Of ha bII
man system, the liver, not by the electric
light of the modern dissecting-room, but
by the dim light of comparatively dark
age, and yet had seen it's important func-
ton in the
GOD-BUILT CASTLE
Of the human body; it's selecting and Sc
creting power, its curious cells, it's elon-
gated, branching tubes-a divine work
manship in central, and right and left
lobe, and the hepatic artery through
which God conducts the crimson tides
On, this vital organ is like the eye of God
in that it never sleeps. Solomon knew of
it and had noticed either in vivisection or
post mortem what awful attacks sin and
dissipation make upon it, until with the
fat of Almighty God it bids the body and
TO the grave and the Other it sends to
judgment. A jsvelin of retribution, not
glsncipg OFF or making a slight wound,
but piercing it from side to side "till the
dart strike through the liver" Galen d
HippUcrates escrlbe to the liver the most
of the worlds moral depression, and the
word melancholy means black bile.
| preach to you this morning the gospel
of health. In taking diagnosis Of
the diseases of the soul you must
also take the diagnosis of the dis
cases of the body. AS if to recognize
this, one whole book of the New Tesla
ment was written by physician. Luke
was doctor and he discourses much OF
physical effects, and he tells of the good
Samaritan's medication of the wounds
by pouring in Oil aud wine, andIrecognizes
munger as hlndrauce to hearing the
Gospel, so that the 5000 were fed; and
records the sparse diet of the prodigal
away from home, and the eXtipguished
eyesight OF the beggar by the wayslde,
and let's Us know CT the hemorrhage OF
the wounds of the dying Christ and the
miraculous pOst-mortem resuscitation.
And any estimate of the spiritual scondi~
ton that does not include also an esti.
mate Of the physical condition is iRcom-
plete. When the door-keeper Of Congress
fell dead from excessive OF because Bur
goyne had surrendered at Saratoga, and
Philip V. OF Spain dropped dead at
the news of his country's defeat in battle,
and Cardinal Wolsey expired IS result
of Henry VIII IS anathems, it was
demonstrated that the
ponv AMI cOTrr
are Siamese twins and when you thrill
the one with JOY or sorrow you thrill the
other. We might as well recognize the
tremendous fact that there are two
mighty fortresses in the hnmsn body, the
heart and the liver; the heart, the for
tress OF all the grsces, the liver the for
tress of all the furies. You may have
the head filed with all mathematics,
and the ear with all musical appreciation,
and the mouth with all eloquence, and the
hand with ali industries, and the heart
with all generosities, and yet "a dart
strike through the liver"
L. Let Christian people avoid the mis-
take that they are all wrong with God be.
cause they suffer from depression Of
spirits. Many 8 consecrated man has
found his spiritual sky befogged, and Die
hope OF heaven blotted out, and himself
plunged chin deep in the Slough OF
Despond, and has said: "My heart is MOI
right with God, and I think 1 mus
have made mistake, and instead @!
,eing Chi Of light l am child OF
darkness. No one can feel as gloomy 81
feel and be { Christian" And he hse
gone to his minister for consolation, anC
4